In view of the following context (vv. 19–21), and remembering how the Lord’s table was defiled by excess at Corinth (1 Cor. xi. 17–34), it seems to us probable that the warning of verse 18 had special reference to the Christian assemblies. The institution of the common meal, the Agapé or Lovefeast accompanying the Lord’s Supper, suited the manners of the early Christians, and was long continued. The cities of Asia Minor were full of trade-guilds and clubs for various social and religious purposes, in which the common supper, or club-feast, furnished usually by each member bringing his contribution to the table, was a familiar bond of fellowship. This afforded to the Church a natural and pleasant means of intercourse; but it must be purified from sensual indulgence. Wine was its chief danger.
The eastern coast of the Ægean is an ancient home of the vine. And the Greeks of the Asian towns, on those bright shores and under their genial sky, were a light-hearted, sociable race. They sought the wine-cup not for animal indulgence, but as a zest to good-fellowship and to give a freer flow to social joys. This was the influence that ruled their feasts, that loosened their tongues and inspired their gaiety. Hence their wit was prone to become ribaldry (ver. 4); and their songs were the opposite of the “spiritual songs” that gladden the feasts of the Church (ver. 19). The quick imagination and the social instincts of the Ionian Greeks, the aptness for speech and song native to the land of Homer and Sappho, were gifts not to be repressed but sanctified. The lyre is to be tuned to other strains; and poetry must draw its inspiration from a higher source. Dionysus and his reeling Fauns give place to the pure Spirit of Jesus and the Father. “The Aonian mount” must now pay tribute to “Sion hill”; and the fountain of Castalia yields its honours to
“Siloa’s brook that flowed
Fast by the oracle of God.”
Our nature craves excitement,—some stimulus that shall set the pulses dancing and thrill the jaded frame, and lift the spirit above the taskwork of life and the dreary and hard conditions which make up the daily lot of multitudes. It is this craving that gives to strong drink its cruel fascination. Alcohol is a mighty magician. The tired labouring man, the household drudge shut up in city courts refreshed by no pleasant sight or cheering voice, by its aid can leave fretted nerves and aching limbs and dull care behind, and taste, if it be only for a feverish moment, of the joy of bounding life. Can such cravings be hindered from seeking their relief? The removal of temptation will accomplish little, unless higher tastes are formed and springs of purer pleasure opened to the masses for whom our civilization makes life so drab and colourless. “One finds traces of the primitive greatness of our nature even in its most deplorable errors. Just as impurity proceeds at the bottom from an abuse of the craving for love, so drunkenness betrays a certain demand for ardour and enthusiasm, which in itself is natural and even noble.... Man loves to feel himself alive; he would fain live twice his life at once; and he would rather draw excitement from horrible things than have no excitement at all” (Monod).
For the drunkards of Ephesus the apostle finds a cure in the joys of the Holy Ghost. The mightiest and most moving spring of feeling is in the spirit of man kindred to God. There is a deep excitement and refreshment, a “joy that human thought transcends,” in the love of God shed abroad in the heart and the communion of true saints, which makes sensuous delights cheap and poor. Toil and care are forgotten, sickness and trouble seem as nothing; we can glory in tribulation and laugh in the face of death, when the strong wine of God’s consolations is poured into the soul.
“Be filled with the Spirit,” says the apostle—or more strictly, “filled in the Spirit”; since the Holy Spirit of God is the element of the believer’s life, surrounding while it penetrates his nature: it is the atmosphere that he breathes, the ocean in which he is immersed. As a flood fills up the river-banks, as the drunkard is filled with the wine that he drains without limit, so the apostle would have his readers yield themselves to the tide of the Spirit’s coming and steep their nature in His influence. The Greek imperative, moreover, is present, and “describes this influence as ever going forth from the Spirit” (Beet). This is to be a continual replenishment. Paul has prayed that we may “be filled unto all the fulness of God” (iii. 19), and has bidden us grow “to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ” (iv. 13) in whom we “are made full” (Col. ii. 9): in the replenishment of the Spirit the fulness of God in Christ is sensibly imparted. God’s fulness is the hidden and eternal spring of all that can fill our nature; Christ’s fulness is its revelation and renewed communication to the race; the Holy Spirit’s fulness is its abiding energy within the soul and within the Church. Thus possessed, the Church is truly the body of Christ (iv. 4), and the habitation of God (ii. 21, 22).
The words of verses 19, 20 show that St Paul is thinking of that presence of the Spirit in the Christian community, which is the spring of its affections and activities. The Spirit of Jesus, the Son of man, is a kindly and gracious Spirit, the guardian of brotherhood and friendship, the inspirer of pure social joys and genial converse. The joy in the Holy Ghost that in its warmth and freshness filled the hearts of the first Christians, soared upward on the wings of song. Their very talk was music: they “spoke to each other in psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and making melody with their heart to the Lord.” Love loves to sing. Its joys
“from out our hearts arise,
And speak and sparkle in our eyes,
And vibrate on our tongue.”
All exalted sentiment tends to rhythmical expression. There is a mystical alliance, which is amongst the most significant facts in our constitution, between emotion and art. The rudest natures, touched by high feeling, will shape themselves to some sort of beauty, to some grace and refinement of expression. Each new stirring of the pulse of man’s common life has been marked by a re-birth of poetry and art. The songs of Mary and Zechariah were the parents and patterns of a multitude of holy canticles. In the Psalms of Scripture the New Testament Church found already an instrument of wide compass strung and tuned for her use. We can imagine the delight with which the Gentile Christians would take up the Psalter and draw out one and another of its pearls, and would in turn recite them at their meetings, and adapt them to their native measures and modes of song. After a while, they began to mix with the praise-songs of Israel newer strains—“hymns” to the glory of Christ and the Father, such as that with which this epistle opens, needing but little change in form to make it a true poem, and such as those which break in upon the dread visions of the Apocalypse; and added to these, “spiritual songs” of a more personal and incidental character, like Simeon’s Nunc dimittis or Paul’s swan-song in his last letter to Timothy. In verse 14 above we detected, as we thought, an early Church paraphrase of the Old Testament. In later epistles addressed to Ephesus, there are fragments of just such artless chants as the Asian Christians, exhorted and taught by their apostle, were wont to sing in their assemblies: see 1 Timothy iii. 16, and 2 Timothy ii. 11–13.
Upon this congenial soil, we trace the beginnings of Christian psalmody. The parallel text of Colossians (iii. 16) discloses in the songs of the Pauline Churches a didactic as well as a lyric character. The apostle bids his readers “teach and admonish one another by psalms, hymns, spiritual songs.” The form of the sentence of chapter iv. 4–6 in this letter, and of 1 Timothy iii. 16, suggests that these passages were destined for use as a chanted rehearsal of Christian belief. Thus “the word of Christ dwelling richly” in the heart, poured itself freely from the lips, and added to its grave discourse the charms of gladdening and spirit-stirring song.